Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS Summit Mastery · 2026-10-03

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Write about the following topic:

Many young people choose to take a year out between finishing school and starting university in order to gain work experience or to travel. The experience of non-academic life this offers benefits the individual when they return to education.

To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your knowledge or experience

Student answer (Band 5.5)

The Value of education directly and indirectly, visibly and invisibly determine the whole course of man's life. There is hardly any sphere of life in which the value of education is not realized. However, practical life experiences are also important because in this way you can decide what you gonna do in your life.

Some Youngsters choose to take a break after college before they get admission in university because they want to gain experience and understand the importance of education.

In this essay, I will discuss about why some people choose to take break and other not and what are the drawbacks of it.

Before getting admission in university, some people choose to take a break from education and experience the non academic world. In this way, they understand the needs of the modern world and then they decide what they are going to do next. For example, we live in the age of technology and there are plenty of career choices in the field of technology. A computer science student take a break before getting admission in university. He visits different companies, he interviews different people related to this field and he do his own research work. After that, he decides what subject he is going choose in computer science.

However, on the contrary, the people who don't choose to take break before getting admission in university, they end up anxious. Because they don't know why they chose that course and either there will be a great future with it or not. Sometimes, they get into deep depression and started fearing about their future. In this way, bunch of their time is wasted and as a result they fail.

To conclude, I would say that, the students must take break to think about what they are going to next. Because it is one of the most important decisions of their life.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses the prompt only partially, showing some confusion regarding the specific task requirements. While the introduction briefly touches on taking a break before university, the writer introduces an entirely different sub-topic in the thesis statement—discussing 'why some people choose to take break and other not and what are the drawbacks of it'—which deviates from the prompt's explicit focus on whether non-academic life benefits the individual upon return to education. The student's position is somewhat unclear and inconsistent because the body paragraphs tend to wander into general discussions about career confusion and anxiety rather than directly answering how the gap year experience benefits future university studies. Ideas are limited and under-developed, relying on basic assertions about students interviewing people or getting depressed without deeper exploration of the academic benefits.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay displays some overall organization with recognizable paragraph breaks, including an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion, but it lacks a clear, overall logical progression. The transitions between paragraphs feel abrupt, and cohesive devices are often repetitive or mechanical, such as the frequent use of 'In this way' and 'Before getting admission in university'. Referencing is occasionally unclear, particularly when the pronoun 'they' is used ambiguously between students, companies, and people in general. While the writer attempts to guide the reader through the text, the lack of sophisticated linking words and the somewhat disjointed flow between sentences keep the essay at this level.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

Vocabulary is limited and minimally adequate for the task. The student relies heavily on basic, repetitive phrasing like 'take a break', 'getting admission in university', and 'future'. There are noticeable errors in word choice, collocation, and word form, such as 'what you gonna do', 'non academic' (missing hyphen), 'choose to take break', and 'he do his own research work'. Furthermore, awkward phrasing like 'bunch of their time is wasted' and 'started fearing about their future' causes some difficulty for the reader and lacks the appropriate academic register required for this task type.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writer demonstrates a limited range of grammatical structures, relying mostly on simple sentences joined by basic coordinating conjunctions. When attempts are made at complex sentences, they are often faulty, featuring frequent errors in subject-verb agreement ('A computer science student take', 'he do'), missing articles ('in computer science', 'take break'), and incorrect verb tenses ('what they are going to next'). Punctuation is also erratic, with misplaced commas and fragments. These frequent errors cause some difficulty for the reader, though the core meaning of the sentences can generally be deciphered.

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